The Pinnacles, WA

These limestone formations in Western Australia were created by the erosion of sand dunes made from marine fossil-bearing sediments.  

Plants once lived on the dunes and contributed to calcite cementation of interior columns, which have been exposed by erosion of softer dune material.

It reminds me of the film Pitch Black a little bit, except, without the alien human eating creatures :/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SVUrY2JXBg&feature=fvwrel  

WA's Horizontal Waterfall

The Horizontal Falls in the north-west of Western Australia is described by David Attenborough as "one of the greatest natural wonders of the world".

The horizontal waterfall in Talbot Bay, Western Australia, is produced by tidal movements causing water to bank up against one side of the narrow cliff.  It is amazingly beautiful and this short video will explain and show you in more detail.

I will visit here one day for sure!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_bWS2sdD2U 

Another date in History - November 26th 1703 - Storm, Southern England

Tomorrow is another day in history to remember.

A violent storm, lasting all day, swept in from the Atlantic, causing havoc as it raged across souther England.

In Cornwall, a lighthouse was swept away, while elsewhere thousands of acres were uprooted and about 150 people killed by flying debris and roof collapses.
An estimated 8,000 seaman died when hundreds of ships were wrecked off the coast.

The British Fleet was devastated.



Another event in November for England was in 1873 - Fog.

London was plagued with thick fogs containing sulphur dioxide (SO2) and soot, referred to as "pea soup", exacerbated by smoke from thousands of industrial and domestic fires.
Between January 26 and 29, 1880, London experienced smog so severe, due to the extraordinary weather conditions of that day, that there were 1176 excess deaths reported.  

Server fog continued to plague London right up until the mid-twentieth century.

Join me on Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/FindingTheBeautyInEverything

Join me on Facebook. 

I have decided to create a page where I will post my blog,share links,photos, anything I find awesome.Topics from science to sustainability. 

I will post stuff like, my blog, my photos, my interests: Earth Science, Environmental science, mineralogy, biology, anthropology, The Universe, Atmospheric science, sustainability, nature, nurture, psychology, humour and sometimes just utter nonsense - you name it, I will be posting it. I am pretty random, occasionally there will be music but that my dears could have a whole page to itself! 

Just enjoy my page and try and find the beauty in everything ;)

The Pale Blue Dot

Carl Sagen is a hero of mine - and I feel I need not explain anything about this very short documentary, except it will be the best 3.30 minutes you will ever watch in my opinion :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p86BPM1GV8M

Investigating human origins with fossils

The investigation in human origins is kind of like a detective story.  Clues lead the anthropologist on a search for evidence, using techniques developed in many other fields of science, such as geology, chemistry and zoology, this is why this topic is of real interest to me as well as the many others.  I have started to collect mineral and rocks but do not have any fossils, to purchase them they cost a lot of money. Not only are they valuable to collectors, but are essential in the investigation into human origins.  The search for evidence still continues today at an increasing rate.  As new techniques are developed, new knowledge is built on and foundations laid in the past.

Any preserved trace left by a previously living organism is, of course, a fossil.  Bones and teeth are the most common to be fossilised, but preserved footprints, faces and other remains can provide some really valuable information.

When we consider billions of organisms that have lived on earth, the chance that the individual plant or animal will be fossilised is very small.  Normally, dead organisms are decayed by micro-organisms and no trace of their existence is left.  Parts of organisms may become fossilised when they are buried by drifting sand, mud deposits by rivers, volcanic ash, or, in the case with more recent human ancestors, by other members of the species.  If buried rapidly, conditions may not be suitable for the activity of decay organisms and decomposition may be slowed or prevented.

The nature of the soil is very important for the fossilisation of bone.  In wet, acid soils minerals in the bones are dissolved and no fossilisation occurs.   However if the wet, acid soil contains no oxygen, like peat for example, complete preservation of the soft tissues of animals as well as bones may occur.  
Bones buried with alkali soils produce the best fossils since the minerals in the bones are not dissolved. New minerals, often lime or iron oxide, are deposited in the pore of the bones, replacing organic matter that makes up about 35% I think by weight of the bone.  The bone turns into rock, it becomes 'petrified' (seen Harry Potter?) but the details and structure are still preserved.

Fossil ancestors are often found at the edges of ancient lakes and river systems, in caves or in volcanically active areas.  It is unusual for animals to be preserved near volcanic eruptions because the heat would obviously destroy the organism, but in East Africa, ash falls have preserved fossils of many human ancestors.  Most fossils are found by chance, but also by painstaking excavation of likely sites.

Western Australia's unique Leeuwin current

Cold currents flowing along the western edge of continents is the norm for all except Western Australia, where the warm Leeuwin current, coming from the north between Australia and Indonesian archipelago flows down the west coast, forcing the cold current off shore.  This benefits the terrestrial environment.  As the water off Western Australia is warm, evaporation from the sea surface creates clouds, bringing rain further north than would be the case off the coast of South Africa or South America.  Mean average rainfall in the mid-west of Australia is more than twice as high as rainfall at an equivalent latitude on the west coast of Africa.

Agriculturally, Western Australia benefits from the warm Leeuwin current.  Although there are no high mountains to produce orographic rainfall (rainfall related to altitude) on the west coast, the warmer seas compensate to some extent.

Uniquely, significant upwelling does not occur on Western Australia's coast because it is suppressed by the Leeuwin current.  Driven by the relatively high water levels in the Indonesian archipelago it can rise water levels as high as 20 cm.  This warm current may decrease marine productivity off the west coast, but it allows coral reefs to grow as far as Perth in Western Australia.

A great lecture worth watching called  "Life along the Leeuwin Current: seashells of the Central West and Houtman Abrolhos" by Shirley Slack-Smith who is an aquatic zoologist gives a great talk about the uniqueness of the Western Australian's coast.

http://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/videos/life-along-leeuwin-current-seashells-central-west-and-houtman-abrolhos

The Chemistry of Fireworks

I love fireworks!  I could watch a firework show for hours, so any opportunity I get here in Australia to see them I do.  I also love chemistry, my favourite topic is the modern atomic theory, and the reactions between complex mixtures of chemicals and the outcomes. What made me think of this was actually the film The Lord Of The Rings that was on last night,  where Gandalf throws a spectacular firework display on the eve of Bilbo Bagging's fair well.  I started to think about the complex chemistry that is going on to make such beautiful aesthetic entertainment that most people don't even think about.
So this prompted me to write a short blog on the chemistry of how fireworks, work!

I guess the art of using mixtures of chemicals to produce explosives is an ancient one to say the least.  Black powder - a mixture of potasium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur - was being used in China well before 1000A.D. and is also used in military explosives too, no surprise there, also in constuction blasting and, of course, fireworks.  Years and years ago fireworks just used to be basically rockets and loud bangs and the colours such as orange and yellow came from charcoal and iron fillings.
However, great advances in chemistry in the 19th century had new compounds finding their way into fireworks.  Salts of copper, strontium, and barium added some brilliant colours.  Magnesium and aluminium metals gave a dazzling white light. 

So, how do these fireworks actually produce these brilliant colours and rather loud bangs?  There is really only a handful of different chemicals that are actually responsible for the most spectacular effects.  To produce the noise and flashes, an oxidizer, (something that has a strong affinity for electrons) is reacted with a metal such as magnesium or aluminium mixed with sulfur.  The resulting reaction produces a brilliant flash, whixh is due to the magnesium and aluminium burning, and a loud bang is produced by the rapidly expanding gases.... cool huh?

For a colour effect, an element with a coloured flame is included.
Yellow colours in fireworks are due to sodium, strontium salts give the red colour and barium salts give the green colour.  Achieving the vivid white flashes and the brilliant colours requires complex combinations of chemicals.  For example, because a white flash produces high flame temperatures, the colours tend to wash out.  Another problem arises from the use of sodium salts.  Because sodium produces an extremely bright yellow colour, sodium salts cannot be used when other colours are desired, ( It would be worth checking out the energy states of atoms that goes into more detail about the colours that elements give off during different energy levels).

In short, the manufacturer of fireworks that produce the desired effects and are also safe to handle requires very careful selection of chemicals.  No wonder they cost so much!

Wednesday's Solar Eclipse and some Sun facts

Wednesday, 14th November, is the solar eclipse.  I am hoping to go out early morning at the Perth Observatory to view it, however the chances are slim as it will only be somewhat viewable here in Perth for about 30 minutes depending just after sunrise.

So, I thought id post some cool facts that I know about the Sun as kind of a celebration for the eclipse.
I have already blogged a detailed summary of the making and death of stars, but here are just a few more cool things I know about that amazing, life giving star in the sky.

Solar storms; Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs for short, can hurl more than 100 billion tons of mass into deep space at speeds millions of kilometers an hour.  The ejected mass is in the form of subatomic particles.  When these reach the Earth, they interact with the planets upper atmosphere and magnetic field.... the spectacular lights of the aurora borealis.

Solar Prominences; Vast curling clouds of relatively cool plasma can easily been seen through a telescope with a suitably dense filter to shut out the glare.  Unlike CMEs, these visually dramatic prominences are usually confined within the Sun's atmosphere, the corona.

Sunspots; The photosphere is the obviously bright surface of the Sun.  It is often dappled with sunspots, created when huge and powerful loops within the Sun's magnetic field force their way through the photosphere.

Solar Grains; Granulation is caused by convection currents inside the Sun.  Hot material rises into the photosphere, then cools down (cooled for the Sun anyway) and falls back around the edges of each cell.  Think Lava lamp.

Jets on the Sun; Imagine a pipe as wide as say, Arizona, and as tall as the Earth from pole to pole.  Now imagine this pipe filled with hot gas moving 50,000km per mile.  Think of the pipe made not from any solid materials by just by a transparent magnetic field.  This is a spicule, one of thousands constantly generated by the Sun.  They last for around 5 minutes and then fade.

and finally - The Eclipse; A solar eclipse occurs when the moon interposes itself between the Sun and the Earth, temporarily obscuring our view of the Sun.  By a lucky coincidence, the Moon's disc neatly superimposes over the Sun's disc during a full eclipse, leaving just the corona visible.  This is a perfect time for scientists to observe the Sun.

Well, there we go, some pretty cool facts about our star, its work googling some of these as the pictures are amazing..... Wish me luck for Wednesday :)

Altruism part two - George Price's theorem, an evolutionary survival trait explained by Math?

Evolution, tiny changes over billions of years explain the physical make up of our bodies, but is it also responsible for how we behave?  Can it explain compassion and kindness?

There was a mathematician, George Price, who believed that true human kindness didn't exist,  but it was nothing more than an evolutionary survival trick in which he developed an equation to prove it.

Have you ever done something truly kind or ever won a medal for your selfless act of bravery?  Suppose that someone could prove, that your so called kindness, is merely an illusion, nothing more than an accident of our evolution.... what does that say about the very nature of good and evil?

George Price lived in two worlds, one of numbers and one of people.  In the world of numbers he is a genius, but in his world of people, he is not so good.  Price travelled to London in search of a new direction, where he buries himself in many of London's libraries, reading as many science journals that he finds interesting, where he stumbles on a subject that he has never thought about before - evolution.

Charles Darwin's theory on natural selection suggests that tiny changes to our offspring, can make one more likely to survive and reproduce than another, for example, if you lived in an area where resources became sparse, and you had to climb trees to get food, those with better tree climbing skills would be able to get the food and survive whilst those others who didn't receive those tree climbing genes wouldn't be able to climb and therefore wouldn't survive.

Evolution is nothing new, but Price finds a revolutionary paper by a biologist names William Hamilton, that applies that evolution, not to the way our bodies work, but the way we behave.  So not just a physical characteristic but a social one too, that social behaviour is carried in our genes, just like hair or eye colour.  

Price wanted to know, how can self generous self sacrifice, known as Altruism, be a survival trait?  Imagine a gene that caused the ultimate self sacrifice, to give your life on behalf of somebody else, that gene will surly disappear as that individual will have no offspring, however if this gene is part of the family, this gene can be passed on, like a mother who saved her three offspring by throwing herself in front of a bus, would have a better chance of her three offspring having that same gene and passing it on.

Price looks at this with a mathematical mind, and develops a new set of equations that explains this idea where he sends his work to Hamilton.  What price comes up with isn't a theory, rather a theorem, a mathematical truth and a truth that is always right in all circumstances.  This theorem sets out to prove Hamilton's idea that Altruism, is indeed, an evolutionary survival trait. No matter how selfless a person seems, math says that genes are always in control, you may think your being generous, but in reality your behaviour is really to benefit your own genes.  

However, as Price's social skills become more apparent, as he goes out, he see's pure Altruism all around him, and wonders if these examples of human kindness can really be explained by Math, not only does he wonder, he actually hopes, he has made an error.  All he needed is one case to blow out his own theorem.  

After countless hours trying to figure it out, he turns to religion and now believes that god has created true kindness, despite all that science says, changing his whole ideas and even his own religion in order for him to show true Altruism and try and wipe out any of his past ideas.  This ultimately changes his entire life. He begins to live a very selfless life, giving away everything he possess to any body and everybody, he goes hungry and without shelter or warmth.  This new life nearly kills him and he turns to his good friend Hamilton who helps him.

He now realises that trying disproof his theorem is a hopeless cause.  No matter how selfless his acts appear, there is always the possibility that some underlining evolutionary advantage was at play.  He simply could not proof that the math was correct or incorrect.

All this was too much for him, and was found on January 6, 1975, dead, he had cut his throat with nail scissors, killed by his own theorem.  

George Price was buried in an unmarked grave in London.  Hamilton said that he had only ever seen two examples of truly altruistic behaviour, Mother Teresa and his friend, George Price.

Price's theorems remain central to modern evolutionary biology to this day.


http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_Price_of_Altruism.html?id=5iy51X-70LAC

Fly through the Universe

The largest sky map revealed... this is an amazing 2 minutes, again, view full screen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOjrImaPh80&feature=share

The Movie 'Home'

I have been plugging this movie for quite some time now and I simply cannot plug it enough.

Home, our planet, a powerful film about the sheer wonder and beauty of our planet and the human impacts that are effecting its balance.

Watch full screen because the aerial views and music is breathtaking and somewhat haunting..... 

Click 'watch the movie' under the trailer to view on youtube.

http://www.homethemovie.org/en

Warped Space - the fabric of space

How did Einstein end up solving the problem of gravity?  

Well, he learnt an entirely new form of mathematics, called non-Euclidean geometry, and from that formulated a theory in which neither space nor time is flat.  Bare with me, this is some cool stuff. 

Rather, in Einstein's theory, both space and time are warped by the presence of mass, which causes them to curve.  A good way to picture how gravity works within general relativity is to picture a bowling ball on a trampoline.  As the ball sits on the flexible surface, it creates an indentation.  In general relativity, the same thing happens when a massive object (like Earth, the Moon or the Sun) sits in the 'fabric' of space time.  Space and time must both 'curve' around it, and it creates an indentation in the very dimensions of the Universe.  Just as with a bowling ball on a trampoline, the more massive the object, the larger the indentation and the greater the area influenced by the objects presence.

If a small ball was rolled towards the bowling ball, its path would be altered by the indentation of the larger ball, which warps the fabric itself. This, in essence, is the same principle by which the Moon and satellites orbit the Earth.  Everything is basically falling towards something with a greater mass.

Watch this short 6 minute video that shows a very good animation of this theory, at about 2.40 minutes in.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHPqhTY6dh0&feature=related

Australia's most recent volcano

Just something that may interest you..

The most recent volcanic activity in Australia occurred at Tower Hill in western Victoria.  The 'hill', a presumed extinct volcano, last erupted 25 000 years ago, building the ash cone that can be seen today, and sending a river of lava (lava is the name of magma above the surface) several kilometers south to the coast.

The lava forms the low basalt points, rocks and reefs between Kilarney Beach and Port Fairy, the youngest igneous (volcanic) rocks in Australia.  WA has the oldest rocks.  Tower Hill was declared Victoria's first national park in 1892.  It is now a State Game Reserve.

http://vro.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/glenregn.nsf/pages/eruption_points_tower_hill 

The power of the Wind

Well what a couple of rainy, windy days we have had here in good old WA.  

I love this weather - many people think i'm mad... I seem to be saying that a lot lol :/  Anyhow, got me thinking about Wind power as a renewable energy source, I mean, where in the world don't we get wind.

Wind power, like solar power, has evolved over a long period of time, beginning with early Chinese and Persian civilizations.  Wind energy was one of the first non-animal sources of energy to be exploited by these early civilizations as it propelled ships around the world and it was use to drive windmills in order to grind grain and to pump water. The verity of machines that has been devised or proposed to harness wind energy is considerable.  Modern Wind turbines come in two basic configurations: Horizontal axis and vertical axis turbines. Horizontal and vertical wind turbines both make use of the aerodynamic forces generated by aerofoils in order to extract power from the wind, but each harness these forces in a different way, vertical-axis wind turbines have an advantage over horizontal wind turbines as they do not have to shift with changes in wind direction which reduces maintenance and tower costs.  The majority of modern wind turbines are generated by electricity and range from small to large wind turbines.  The performance of these two sized wind turbines differ as the small has a much lower power density of a few hundred watts because of the limited wind potential in the sites, in comparison to the large wind turbines that are situated in Wind farms that can create large amounts of energy of 1 MW.

 So where is it currently being used in Australia and what are its future prospects for its use?

The climate is changing. The majority of climate scientists from around the world confirm greenhouse gases in our atmosphere have been increasing since the industrial revolution, prompting a wide range of climate shifts that have the potential to threaten our environment and our way of life if greenhouse gas levels continue to rise.  Australia is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Our environmental, social and economic security is at risk unless we play our part in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  Electricity generation in Australia is responsible for more than a third of our greenhouse gas emissions. Eighty per cent of Australia’s electricity currently comes from coal. Therefore, any attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must focus on the energy sector and support the transition to clean, less polluting technologies.

Fortunately, Australia has some of the world’s best clean energy sources, many of which are already powering Australian homes and businesses.  One of my previous blogs about Fremantle putting solar on the town hall is a prime example of governments taking action on renewable energy practices.  Making full use of our abundant clean energy resources - like wind, solar, hydro, wave and geothermal has the potential to meet Australia's growing energy needs as well as create new job opportunities and export markets.  A clean energy economy will create new opportunities, jobs and provide other social, economic and environmental benefits to both current and future Australian generations.

Australia has some of the best wind resources in the world.  Wind energy is currently the most cost-effective renewable energy resource in Australia.

It involves the generation of electricity from the naturally occurring power of the wind.  Wind turbines capture wind energy within the area their blades pass through. The blades in turn drive an electrical generator to produce power for export to the electricity grid.

Unlike conventional sources of electricity generation, like coal, no water is required for wind farm operation and no greenhouse gases are produced.  A single wind turbine can produce enough energy to supply up to 2,000 average households each year and save around 1 tonne of greenhouse gas for every megawatt produced.  Sites where there is strong, consistent wind are the most appropriate locations for wind farms.  Fremantle is yet again trying to pursue renewable energy and hoping to install wind turbines in the very near future and very much demonstrating a very active role in become sustainability leaders.  

Onward and Upward!

Music Music...and its effects on mood

There are very few things shared by every human culture, the ones that we find everywhere are language, and music.  This suggests that there is some fundamental connection between music and the way our brain functions.  Recent research has found that uplifting music effects the limbic system in your brain, the emotional centre releasing endorphins which make you feel good, so this connection between music and the functioning brain is quite profound.

Music is a very important part of my life, I have grown up listening, dancing and singing to music.  I have known myself cry my eyes out due to a piece of music that overwhelms me emotionally, both happy and sad.  When ever I feel a bit down, I put on my music and it acts like a happy drug, puts me in such a good, happy mood.  When I go out, all I need is the music and I just dance the night away... I imagine all sorts when I listen to music, and this can be very stimulating to say the least.
Interestingly, studies have shown that the frequencies in 'major' key notes are similar to our voices when we are talking in an excited way, so no wonder this type of music is uplifting.

Music, can also have a profoundly negative effect on our emotional state too, unpleasant music triggers the posterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that lights up on MRI scans when a person is subjected to emotional pain or conflict, so theres a suspicion, that we may be relating discordant music with negative speech.  A 'minor' key note, slightly sad and melancholia, have shown that those frequencies are very similar to our voices when we are depressed or sad.  So again, no wonder if we are feeling a bit down or more seriously, depressed, it can make us feel far worse.

Music not only sounds beautiful, but it speaks to us, it tells us stories, it makes us feel overwhelmed with emotion, it has effects on our brain that we are only just beginning to understand.  Life without my music - I simply cannot imagine it.